Tips for Suitable Monitors in a Flight Simulation Cockpit

The first tip is very important – one of the first purchases that need to be made when building a flight simulator cockpit is the monitor set. If you buy a set of identical monitors all at the same time you have the best chance of a consistent image when it is spread across those monitors.

When an image is displayed across three or more monitors, they need to be identical. (Note, more than 3 monitors will necessitate multi-computers – you can’t really stretch a single image across more than three monitors – the distortion would become unacceptableble).

It’s an obvious tip when you think about it, but in actual practice, when I am called in to build a simulator and the client has already purchased the hardware, inevitably the selected monitors are not identical.

There are two other tips that are relevant:

In the old days it was necessary to remove the actual monitor from the plastic bezel, but nowadays it is possible to purchase monitors with very thin bezels like this:

A monitor with a very thin bezel surrounding the picture area

The other tip is something you need to watch out for but is difficult to ascertain if you are buying online. The stand needs to be removable without leaving a stub which can interfere with the mounting of the monitor. In the picture below the stand is removed but it is difficult (and sometimes impossible) to get rid of a piece jutting out:

The stand can be removed, but a piece still juts out, which can be difficult to remove.

Ideally you need to get hold of a monitor which can be wall-mounted, because then the stand will be easily removable and also have 4 threads to bolt to a cockpit support beam like this:

This monitor has had the stand completely removed and provides not only 4 threads for wall mounting, but also some socket threads from the stand itself.

Contact Dave Britzius

A more Realistic Flight Simulator

One PC and one monitor does not make a flight simulator seem very real. Add a second high-power PC, a few monitors, a yoke, pedals and joystick and you are much closer to the feel of a real aircraft. Now go a step further and enclose a flight simulator into a cockpit shell, surround yourself with monitors powered by a few PCs and things get interesting… Now if you want help setting all this lot up, contact me:Dave BritziusCape Town, South Africa:
Office Telephone: +27 21 558 7076
Mobile: +27 83 270 7787or much better, click here to e-mail me

Build your own Flight Simulator Cockpit?

Flight simulation is fun on a single PC, but a flight simulator cockpit can improve the experience immensely. If you are serious about virtual flying, studying for your pilot’s licence, or maintaining your PPL proficiency, you really want to consider a built-up cockpit. Take a look at my E-Book containing full instructions (many hundreds of pages) of how to build your own flight simulator cockpit. It will require basic woodworking skills and a room big enough (to get the right immersion, it has to be life-sized).